Weather for Chickens - Permutations 2 (rewritten)

Perhaps they’re not ‘weeds’ but wildflowers. After all, a weed is simply a flower growing in the wrong place. "It is not the business of the botanist to eradicate weeds. It’s enough for him if he can tell just how fast they grow.” (C. Northcote Parkinson) The average gardener, on the other hand, is obsessed with them; under no circumstances will he tolerate them in his tidy beds. The gardener knows only too well how fast they grow and spread.

Some weeds (okay, back to calling them weeds) prefer poor, free-draining soil. No wonder that the small patch of land left over by the new bungalows for disabled and elderly people has this wonderful display of Orange Hawkweed, also called fox-and-cubs. It’s easy to see why the nestling clusters of tawny-orange flowers and buds are so-called but one of the hawkweed’s other names,  Grim-the-Collier, is harder to explain.

Some years ago Beloved saw these pretty flowers and thought he’d love some in the garden. He went round collecting seed and spread them on the grass at home. We were extremely lucky that the seed didn’t take except for a few straggly specimen which soon disappeared with mowing. Unless you want to use toxic weedkiller the only other remedy is salting the lawn.

Contrary to the English preference for a manicured lawn I am not at all bothered about our grass. As it is it consists mainly of moss and clover which keep it nice and green looking. But applying generous quantities of salt would have been a bit too much even for me. 

The next swathe of weeds along the footpath is this Lesser Trefoil. It’s a tiny plant, another grass weed, and probably the true Irish shamrock, - the seamrog, or 'cloverlet’.  It’s only really noticeable because where it grows - usually stoney ground or on the edge of tarmac - there are fairly large patches.

A bit further along this very short path running from the High Street to Trinity, a wonderful enclave of ancient almshouses, via the sheltered housing, is this luminous strip of geraniums. Somebody probably had a few too many plants in their garden - the old people’s bungalow gardens are very small - and they simply planted them on the verge between hedge and footpath. Nobody minds that sort of thing in Valley’s End. Geraniums can be a weed, they multiply before you can get the secateurs out.

 Millie was panting; all my stopping and starting obviously did not please her, so I promised her a dip in the river. But before we got to the castle ground and from there to the river we had to pass the children’s playground. No children were in evidence but chicken escapees from the surrounding gardens were using the ramps for a bit of harmless fun, clucking away peacefully and contentedly.

PS: I had to rewrite this whole post; there is no way lost blogposts can be retrieved and Blogger is no help. Best thing is to draft all posts as a document first, then copy and paste.

All of you who responded to my cry for help, thank you very much.